


The Mockingbird's Canon

by CleopatraHill



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, Seduction, Teacher-Student Relationship, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-03
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 15:44:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CleopatraHill/pseuds/CleopatraHill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa neither loves nor trusts the man she now calls her lord husband, but she is willing to learn what he has to teach. AU, post-ACOK divergence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Santa GRRM I am not profiting from your work please do not send your pear-shaped man after me.
> 
> Dedicated with much love to all my fellow creepyshippers. (If you are only here for porn, it's coming soon, I promise!)

The queen had arrived in her chambers early that morning to oversee her dressing, accompanied by a gaggle of maids and two servant boys carrying a heavy, ornate wooden chest between them, which landed on the carpet with an unceremonious thud. Sansa peered curiously at the chest, covered in intricate relief carvings of birds and flowers, as the servants undid the gilded fittings and pulled the lid back.

“Lord Baelish was generous enough to provide your trousseau, since you haven’t one of your own,” Queen Cersei said, her smile implying that Sansa ought to sink to her knees in gratitude at this magnanimity. Sansa only looked at her in confusion. _Why should Lord Baelish provide…but that…that means…_ Her thoughts faltered as the handmaidens held up a gown of fine silvery-white samite and Myrish lace, finer than anything she’d ever owned. Beneath the dress, atop the mound of folded clothing in the chest, she spotted a square of velvet embroidered with the head of the Stark direwolf, outlined in pearls. Her mouth fell open.

The queen reached out and cupped her chin in hand, pushing her jaw back together and tilting it upward, none too gently. “Sansa, dear, you look as forlorn as if we’re passing you off to some stranger,” she said in a tone that might almost be mistaken for kindly. “Be grateful you're going to a friend of your mother's, someone who still has a flicker of sympathy for your treasonous blood. Although Lord Baelish argued so fervently for your hand, I'd almost think he had feelings for you."

Sansa had swallowed hard, had tried her best to look directly through those frosty eyes to a spot on the wall behind her. "Yes, Your Grace."

"You could have done worse," Cersei continued, her clawlike fingernails cutting into Sansa's chin. "We strongly considered marrying you to my brother."

"Ser Jaime?" Sansa blurted out, without thinking.

The queen nearly choked on a peal of laughter. "Of course not. Tyrion."

"Of course," Sansa echoed, cold sweat beading beneath her nightdress as her face flushed with embarrassment. She could not for the life of her imagine being married to the Imp. He'd been kind enough to her in the past, when he'd saved her from the savage beating Joffrey had ordered, but his squashed face and ghastly cleaved nose made her recoil inwardly in horror, and the thought of bedding him was disconcerting: she could not picture how it might work. Lord Baelish was a short man himself, but he was at least of comparable height. "I am grateful, Your Grace, truly," she managed, forcing her lips into a smile and finally freeing herself of Cersei's clenching talons.

Sansa was motionless all through her bath, arms wrapped around her knees as the handmaidens scrubbed her pink in the near-scalding water. She stood perfectly still as they dried her, dabbed her with scent, and dressed her, letting herself be tugged and draped and pinned like a child’s doll. What more was she, after all? She had been nothing more than a plaything for the Lannisters ever since her father’s murder, a source of cruel amusement for the boy she’d once seen as her valiant prince. And even now that he’d grown bored with her, rather than send her home, he was passing her off to the small, smiling lord who hovered so frequently at Queen Cersei’s elbow, the one whose gaze was strong enough to penetrate her smallclothes.

Sansa fought back the hot pricking of tears behind her eyes, trying desperately not to think of the life she’d so briefly thought she might have as the Lady of Highgarden, wearing roses in her hair as she sailed down the Mander with a kind and scholarly, if lame, husband. What would Lady Olenna think of this? Or Margaery? _And Dontos? What of Ser Dontos?_ Her thoughts were suddenly frantic as she recalled the poor drunk fool. Her Florian had been plotting all this time to help her escape, conspiring with some unseen benefactor who could finally spirit her away from this dreadful place, but she’d pushed that notion aside at the dreamy prospect of being wed to Willas Tyrell. Now it was too late. Now she would never leave.

But she dared not let her disappointment show on her face, not with the Queen watching her like a bird of prey ready to strike.

She forced the smile all morning long, all through a simple breakfast of poached eggs in cream and venison sausage that she barely touched, during which Lady Margaery shot her apologetic glances that she could not bear to meet; her grandmother, on the contrary, did not look at Sansa at all. She forced the smile all the way to the sept, her clenched jaw aching. She barely heard the septon's words as he droned on and on about love undying, staring instead at the man in front of her, impeccably dressed in a doublet of storm-grey velvet and black breeches that matched his neatly groomed beard.

 _I don't love him_ , she thought as she regarded Petyr Baelish, and noticed for the first time since she'd met the man that his smile reached the very corners of his eyes, crinkling them. It was so different from Littlefinger's cool, practiced smile that it threw her off guard. _But he doesn't love me either_ , she reminded herself. _He loved my mother, not me. He sees her standing here before him, not me. His smile seems real, but he is still pretending._

Joffrey, serving in her lord father's place as the father of the realm, undid her white-and-grey maiden's cloak, managing to grasp her breast sight unseen as he did so and ignoring her furious flush as he swept it off her shoulders. Tears rose unbidden to her eyes as she caught sight of the Stark direwolf before the cloak was whisked away. Sansa had long ago been robbed of her father's protection; now she was to lose his name, too. She felt hot rivulets running down her cheeks, but blinked and stared ahead at nothing as Lord Baelish unfolded the cloak bearing his sigil, a deep green velvet embroidered with mockingbirds in silver thread. It looked brand-new; surely it had to be, as he had made his own sigil and there had been no prior Lady Baelish to wear it.

Sansa had clearly imagined this part so many times in her mind before that it seemed it had happened already, although in her dreams her groom had always been strong and tall, not slender and slight like the man before her now. Still, Lord Baelish had the movements down correctly: he snapped the cloak open with a broad flourish and in the same motion, swept it across her shoulders. His grey-green eyes locked with hers for only a moment; then as his slim fingers fumbled with the silver clasp, his lips brushed her cheek, in the exact spot her tears had run. She stared at him blankly, until the septon cleared his throat and she realized she had nearly missed her cue.

She recited the words without hearing them, or even realizing she was saying them in the first place; but she must have said them correctly, because Lord Baelish smiled again and recited his own. _With this kiss I pledge my love._ Her face was hot, so hot it felt as if she were boiling inside her skin. The buzzing in her ears was so loud now she barely heard him. He placed his hands gently on either side of her face, and before she quite understood what he was doing, his lips were on hers, searing, pushing, seeking. Sansa had never before been kissed. She closed her eyes, recalling the night of the Blackwater and the fleeting moment when she had thought the Hound might do the same. In her mind's eye, she'd shared dozens of kisses with Ser Loras, but they had been nothing like this. Petyr Baelish's kiss was full of fire and need. When he finally pulled away, her first thought was that her mouth hurt.

 _One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever, and cursed be the one who comes between them._ As they turned to face the guests, Sansa stared at her lord husband, beaming at the crowd before him. The holy light of the sept's candles were reflected in his eyes. _Who were you kissing?_ Had he been tending that fire for her lady mother? She swallowed, the lump in her throat hard and bitter, thinking of Queen Cersei's words. _I'd almost think he'd had feelings for you._

What did he _want_ with her? She remembered the way he'd stared at her at the tourney, the slightly queasy feeling she'd gotten from his intent gaze. _Your mother was my queen of love and beauty once_ , he'd said as he touched her hair. Sansa felt sick all over again. It wasn't Winterfell that Petyr Baelish had wanted to marry her for: it was the inheritance she'd received from her Tully mother, auburn locks and blue eyes. She almost wished that he _were_ marrying her for a castle. Would he forget her name, and call her Cat instead?

The queasiness persisted all through dinner. There was a feast, though not much of one; it scarcely composed a fraction of the seventy-seven-course spread being planned for Joffrey and Margaery’s wedding. Petyr might've been Lord of Harrenhal now, but their gracious hosts hadn't failed to remind him that he was no Lannister, and as such didn't warrant the fanfare that a Lannister marriage might have commanded, even if he was wedding the daughter of Eddard Stark. Surely there was a point to be made there as well.

There had, however, been onion-ale soup and cheese tarts, and a mint-and-lemon-stuffed shoulder of mutton that her lord husband had side-eyed before ignoring entirely, and cherry pottage flecked with rose petals, and a whole platter of lemon cakes they'd set down right in front of her. "You like those, don't you?" he'd inquired cheerfully. She'd nodded dumbly, remembering how young, stupid Sansa had loved them just as much as her precious songs and stories, and nibbled at the edge of one before setting it back down at the edge of her plate. When she looked up into the hard emerald eyes of Queen Cersei, she picked it up again.

She prodded at the meat and tarts with a spoon, taking but a few scarce bites, but mostly she drank. No sooner had she drained her goblet of Arbor gold, than a serving girl sidled up to refill it. The buzz in her head amplified, but Sansa welcomed the noise. She tried desperately not to think about the bedding to come, but nightmarish images kept tumbling back into her mind: cruel laughter spilling from Joffrey’s wormy lips as he slashed her bodice laces with a knife, while her lord husband leered openly at her, much as he’d done the day they’d met. All while she stood trembling, arms crossed over her breasts, nothing and no one to shield her. There’d be no Hound to cover her with his cloak; no Imp to stand between her and Joffrey while he stripped her bare. _But it could have been him._ She glanced at Tyrion across the table, chuckling at some jape of Garlan Tyrell’s. _Would that have been worse? He was kind, at least._ Lord Baelish was always courteous to her, but she did not know what to expect from him behind closed doors. The man owned _brothels_ , of all things; would he order her about like one of his whores?

Her imagination failed her here. At home, she’d overheard the occasional boast from some of the Stark guardsmen, and Theon Greyjoy as well, about the girls they’d “tumbled” with in the brothels up north, but usually Robb or her father would silence that sort of talk before she could hear much else.

“More wine, my sweet?” Sansa blinked into the bottom of her now empty cup. Lord Petyr whisked it away from under her nose and extended it to the same serving girl who’d been hovering nearby with a flagon. “Go easy,” he teased her with a light smile. “You’ll end up pouring yourself all over the dance floor.”

 _Dancing._ She nodded mechanically at his words, taking another sip. Perhaps she just ought to drink until she could no longer stand. She’d have to be carried up to his apartments, and then…she could just lie there while he did whatever he meant to do. _Perhaps it will hurt less then, when he takes my maidenhead._ She envisioned blood, bright flowers of crimson blood blooming all over the sheets and staining her thighs, just like the morning she’d awoken to her first flowering, and gulped down most of her wine in one swallow.

At long last, the music began and Lord Baelish proffered his hand to her. "Shall we, my lady?"

She acquiesced with a nod of her head, heavy now with drink, and allowed him to lead her to the floor. Her husband was a surprisingly capable dancer, sweeping her across the floor in time with the chimes of the dulcimer. Sansa could feel the weight of his gaze upon her again, the pressure of his guiding hand. She kept her eyes focused on the mockingbird brooch at his throat.

He leaned into her, his lips close to her ear. "Are you looking forward to the bedding, Sansa? I imagine your former betrothed is giddy with excitement at the thought of stripping you again."

His words both stunned and stung her. Sansa's eyes snapped back to his face, which wasn't exactly smiling, but regarding her expectantly. What sort of cruel jape was he trying to make?

"Of course, if you wish to be spared that particular affront," he murmured as they whirled past the king and Lady Margaery, "all you need do is say so, and I'll see that you are."

Sansa furrowed her brow. "How?" was all she could manage.

"We tell a little lie, that's all." Lord Baelish lifted his head to smile graciously at the Tyrells, all the while keeping his voice a murmur so low Sansa had to strain to hear it over the chorus of flutes and pipes. “There’s nothing you need do, actually, but say the word, and I’ll take care of everything. What say you, sweetling?”

Sansa studied her husband carefully. She had been so certain of his motivation not an hour before; now, she did not know what to think. "I...yes, my lord. Please."

“Good.” He smiled at her as the music signaled a change of partners, and suddenly she found herself in the arms of Garlan Tyrell, while her husband took the hand of Lady Leonette. “Lady Sansa,” the elder Tyrell brother greeted her warmly. “You are truly a vision to behold.”

Sansa blushed. “You are too kind, ser.”

“Truthful, my lady, not so much kind.” He winked at her, and Sansa’s tense, taut body finally began to relax as she smiled back at him. “I must admit, we’re all quite disappointed that you’re not to become a Tyrell,” he admitted in a low voice, close to her ear. “But I daresay we hadn’t much of a chance against your Lord Petyr. He can charm the most vicious of serpents with little more than a smile.”

Sansa blinked at him in surprise, then glanced over his shoulder for a glimpse of her husband, who was spinning Lady Leonette in his arms as she laughed merrily at something he’d said. “Is…is that so, ser?” she asked cautiously, beginning to feel dizzy as she watched them whirl in circles.

“Well, he did manage to charm my grandmother,” Garlan quipped. “No easy task, that, but I imagine you know, you’ve met her yourself. She has no use for flatterers or fools, but she seemed to take a liking to Lord Petyr, even without a great title affixed to his name.” He peered closely at her, his handsome face creased with concern. “My lady, are you feeling quite well? You’ve grown very pale.”

“I…I am fine, ser.” Sansa clutched the sleeve of his doublet as a sudden flash of intense heat, followed by a clammy chill, rippled through her body. The inside of her head tilted and swooped and dipped like a bird diving through the air, although she and Ser Garlan had stopped dancing. “Ser, I…I don’t think I can,” she heard herself gasp as her legs gave out from beneath her, and she crumpled to the floor in a heap, the startled shouts suddenly muffled as everything around her slipped into silence and darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not sure when/if I'll continue, but this has been languishing on my flash drive long enough...

She was flying.

She was soaring high over tall, snow-capped trees, her arms outstretched, dipping and tumbling backward a little in the slipstream. Her arms wobbled, and she saw that where had once been fingers were now tipped with shiny dark feathers. Her feet had fallen away, replaced with grasping talons.

She did not pause to dwell on these irregularities, for she was headed north. She was headed home. Nothing else mattered. Her heartbeat stuttered as the turrets of Winterfell rose in the distance.

But something was wrong.

This could not be her Winterfell.

This castle had met the torch some time ago, though still smoldering with wisps of white smoke rising up here and there. Charred bodies, burnt beyond all recognition, littered the ground, half-embedded in a slurry of mud and ice.  The grey stone towers were now slick and blackened where they had been swallowed by flame. The First Keep had caved in on one side. The rookery tower, where Maester Luwin had lived, was completely gone.

 _No_ , she thought frantically, _this is wrong, it's all wrong, this is not Winterfell, this is a trick, a jape, a nightmare_...and then realized in horror that her wing-arms were molting, the feathers falling off, and the spindly legs thickening into trunks, and instead of gliding on a current of air, she was falling, a heavy lump hurtling toward the ground, toward the thick frozen mud strewn with human remains, the breath stolen from her lungs, making it impossible to scream--

 

* * *

 

Sansa's eyes shot open.

She was lying on a bed, staring up at a long, thin shadow stretched across a ceiling lit by flickering candlelight. The air was warm and heady, perfumed with a strange, sweet incense. She tried to turn her head to the side, then to lift it, but it was as heavy as solid stone. Her hands and arms were much the same, and her feet as well. Her thoughts were as sluggish as her limbs, the images of falling feathers and scorched towers still rippling through her mind, but as her breath evened out, they slipped away. _It was only a dream, all of it,_ she thought, desperate to push the ruined Winterfell out of her mind. _I couldn't really be a bird._

Her body felt as if it were locked in a kind of paralysis, a waking sleep that made it impossible to move. _Why is everything so heavy?_ she wondered groggily as she watched the shadow above her shorten and shrink and finally disappear from sight entirely.

"Sansa?"

The voice that broke the silence, smooth and tinged with concern, crashed through the dull walls of her mind and sent her back to reality with a jolt. The gown, the queen, the sept, the man who kissed her until her lips burned, the sweet wine that washed it all away. She was still wearing the gown, she knew, for she was now sweating through the fine samite, although someone had removed her soft doeskin slippers at some point.

Sansa expelled her breath in a wordless puff. She knew her husband was close to her bedside, though her inability to move her head kept him annoyingly out of view.

"What--happened?" she rasped.

"Oh, there was quite a dither after you collapsed. Pycelle wanted to examine you further, but you _had_ had quite a lot of wine and excitement for one day, so there was really no need. I had you carried up here--after apologizing profusely to His Grace for ruining his fun, of course." His smiling face swam into view at last, his fingers reaching out to caress a lock of her hair that spilled over the pillow. "I did tell you not to drink so quickly, sweetling."

Sansa gazed dully up into those unsmiling eyes, obscured by the poor lighting. "You put...something in the wine," she accused slowly, remembering how he'd taken the goblet from her, how the servant girl had lingered behind her the whole time...she hadn't seen her serve anyone else, but she hadn't been paying much heed to anything but her own fretful thoughts.

Petyr only smiled again. "Well done. Consider this your first lesson, my Sansa: never let a goblet out of your sight, regardless of who you sup with. When you dwell in a house of vipers, you have no way of knowing which of them is poisonous."

"Poison?" Sansa croaked in alarm.

Her husband dismissed this with an elegant wave of his hand. "Of course, this is only temporary. It's a formula I acquired from a Braavosi alchemist." He settled himself in a chair near the bed, and Sansa found that indeed, her head was slowly clearing, light enough now that she could turn to face him.

"You see, I have patrons who prefer their girls to be...unresponsive, if you will. Not a preference of mine, to be sure, but I try to accommodate all tastes. The girls drink it before their customers arrive, but since it puts them out of commission for hours, I have to charge quite a bit more to recoup my losses." A joyless half-smile creased his face. "The aftereffects are a bit uncomfortable, as I'm sure you've noticed, but there's no lasting harm. Simply a potent sedative, stronger than dreamwine, safer than sweetsleep." He stroked his beard, rubbing the point of it between thumb and forefinger. "Of course, mixed with all the wine you had, it hit you rather hard."

Sansa squinted up at him, trying to process this. _All this to get me out of a bedding?_ "But...you said...after I drank it..." she faltered, recalling what he had said to her during their dance. _You didn't give me a choice at all,_ was what she wanted to say, and yet at the same time, she was grateful for it.

"Yes, I didn't give you much of a choice, did I? But I didn't want the vile little whoreson grasping at your teats any more than you did." Petyr leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "I'm referring to His Grace, by the way, although it could apply to his uncle. Who knows, Joffrey being Joffrey, he might have insisted it his right as king to claim your maidenhead himself, and far be it from a lowly lord like me to stop him. I'd have had to stand aside and watch like a good lapdog."

The very thought made Sansa's gorge rise, her face contorting in disgust as the taste of bile and sugared lemons crept back up her throat. She didn't want to see lemon cakes for a very long time after this.

Petyr noticed her expression and rose, crossing to the sideboard where he began pouring something into a cup from a silver flagon beaded with condensation.

"No more wine..." Her voice sounded so feeble, almost like a whimper.

"It's only milk, sweetling. I agree, you've had enough wine for now." He pressed the cup to her lips, and she swallowed; its ice-cold blandness purged her mouth of the sickly sweet acid. "How does your head feel?"

Sansa found she was able to lift it now, as well as her arms, although she still felt rather wooden. Petyr helped her to sit up, thick tasseled pillows propped beneath her back. "I think they've had rather enough amusement at our expense as it is," he went on as if they were having a casual chat, a sarcastic twinge to his voice. "The grasping little lord from the Fingers and the tainted traitor's daughter, what a match. I've no doubt Cersei chose the menu herself. She had to get her barbs in somehow."

Sansa looked down at her bare toes, then up at him. "My...my lord, why--"

"Just Petyr, Sansa." He smiled.

"P-Petyr..." She doubted he would tell the truth, but she had to ask. "Why did they allow you to marry me, then?"

"Oh, it was quite a trial getting Lord Tywin to agree to it, to be sure, but he was willing to consider the bigger picture, unlike his daughter. Winterfell is a sweet plum, and the Lannisters were most reluctant to let it go to even their loyal Master of Coin. They'd have preferred you wed Lord Tyrion, to cement their claim to it, once they'd rousted your brother--and once you'd whelped a few of his brats, of course." He smirked. "Imagine that, Lord and Lady Imp of Winterfell."

The thought made Sansa shudder, but it wasn't the first one that flickered through her mind at his words. _They have no claim. Winterfell belongs to Robb._ She recalled the day she'd stood in the Throne Room, watching Petyr kneel as Joffrey dubbed him Lord of Harrenhal, and how she'd thought of her brother then, and of her grandfather and uncle at Riverrun, now nominal subjects of the Lord Paramount of the Trident. She'd been so confident her brother would beat back Lord Baelish, and whomever else stood in his way, but now she wasn't so sure. _Now he has me, and all the Lannister forces behind him._

"Lord Tywin is not an entirely unreasonable man, though, and he was very interested in the prospect I put forth," Petyr continued, oblivious to her internal torment. "Cersei was less convinced, and I imagine she's plotting some clumsy counter-deception as we speak. But enough of that for tonight, Sansa. Do you think you can stand up now?"

 _You didn't even answer my question._ "Yes, my l--Petyr." She wiggled her toes a bit to make sure.

"That's a good girl. Stand up, and let's get you out of that heavy gown."


End file.
